Ceramic materials have wide use in applications where it is desirable to coat them with decorative or functional colored or multi-colored designs and images that also possess the usual ceramic properties, such as chemical and mechanical stability.
Present conventional processes for coating ceramic surfaces with decorative or functional designs and images comprise forming an image using lithographic inks containing ceramic pigments on an intermediate structure, namely a starch coated paper, transfer of the printed images to a ceramic blank and firing of the image to melt the pigments and vaporize any organics left in the image. However, such processes are not suitable for short run ceramic printing or for printing ceramic tiles or other products in serial fashion.